What a great picture. This object immediately got on my list. I don't think
I'll manage to image it this year, but certainly next year.

Stefan

"Rick Johnson" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
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Normally I post my images with north up but this one looks "better" with
south up. It is NGC 3239 or Arp 263 located about 50 million light
years away. Seeing it reminded me of the Minnesota state bird the Loon.
They have returned even with the lake still mostly ice covered. For a
while they had no take off room as they need about 100 yards to get into
the air. They fly like fighters. Very fast. Their stall speed is very
high so they need lots of speed to take off. I was in a slow boat once
when one started taking off a good 200 yards away. It was obvious our
boat (doing about 10 mph top speed) would be at about the crossing point
the same time as the loon got there but by then it should be well into
the air. I forgot that without a wind they can't gain altitude but very
slowly. Even though the bow of the boat was less than 2 feet above the
water it whammed into it at about 40 mph. Put a heck of a dent in the
aluminum. Loon bounced off. I expected his beak to be plastered all
over his face but he must have turned his head in time. He seemed dazed
but survived. Loons have a very red eye and a white neck band. The
galaxy seems to have the same in about the right places. Even the white
breast seems represented.

The blue spiral down and to the right shows a red shift of 260 million
light years. The rest that I was able to find data on are about 600
million light years per their red shift data.

The asteroid east of NGC 3239 is (79884) 1999 AP6 at magnitude 18.8

For those that don't know what a loon looks like I've posted a shot of a
pair with their 3 day old young taken last year on the lake. They
weren't happy with me.

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=4x10', RGB=2x10' binned 3x3, STL-11000XM, Paramount
ME

Rick
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Correct domain name is arvig and it is net not com. Prefix is correct.
Third character is a zero rather than a capital "Oh".